CHENNAI: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’ath (AMJ) on Sunday alleged police connivance in the exhumation of the body of a 36-year-old woman of the community by “anti-social elements” from a ‘kabaristan’ at Royapettah on June 1.

At a press conference here, AMJ president Syed Tanveer Ahmed said the police had succumbed to a majority sectarian group’s pressure tactics and allowed the “shameful act.”

Claiming that “biased, bigoted and political mullahs” were bent upon uprooting the community from India, he said certain “vested interests” were carrying false propaganda that Ahmadis were non-Muslims. This despite the fact that all courts, including the Madras High Court, holding that they were a sub-sect of Sunni Muslims.

Ahmed said an AMJ delegation met Union Minister A Raja and State Electricity Minister Arcot Veerasamy, who promised to look into the issue. The Jama’ath demanded a separate burial ground for Ahmadis, protection for their life and property and bringing to book all culprits involved in the illegal exhumation of the woman’s body.

AMJ-Chennai president M Basarath Ahmed alleged that a fatwa passed in Pakistan against the Ahmadis was now being implemented here. The government should identify such elements and monitor them, he said.

All formalities were completed before the body was buried at the Royapettah ‘kabaristan,’ he added.

The deceased woman’s father, Ramzan Ali (65), told The New Indian Express that the police had assured them that whoever tried to disturb the body would be arrested.

“But they neither informed us nor obtained our consent before exhuming the body and reburying it elsewhere. We came to know of it only through newspapers the next day.” The Jama’ath has decided to approach the court on the issue.